Sanders loses bid to avoid deposition in ex-staffer's lawsuit

Despite his resistance, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders will be deposed under oath in the wrongful termination case of a former city employee.

Superior Court Judge John Meyer made the decision Friday and rejected a request by the City Attorney’s Office to limit what questions Sanders might be asked.

After the hearing, Sanders’ spokeswoman Rachel Laing said: “The mayor will comply with the judge’s ruling, of course.”

Scott Kessler claims he was fired from his job as deputy director of the economic development division in late 2008 for talking to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the San Diego Police Department in a conflict-of-interest probe of the Midway area parking and business improvement district.

Kessler alleges in his lawsuit that Sanders and his staff retaliated against him for talking to the FBI and the police, distributing the related police report to the city Ethics Commission and for cooperating with U.S. government officials on an unrelated probe into San Diego’s spending of federal housing aid.

In his lawsuit, Kessler says Sanders staffer Beth Murray told him that as a result of his cooperation with authorities, “All hell had broken loose in the Mayor’s Office, and that people were upset with (Kessler), including the mayor himself.”

Despite a recommendation from the lead investigators to pursue charges in the conflict-of-interest probe, none were filed after Kessler testified before a grand jury in January 2008.

The case involved alleged schemes to steer tens of thousands of dollars toward the North Bay Association of San Diego, a nonprofit organization that managed the Midway business improvement district, and people connected to it using bribery, fraud and conspiracy, according to the police report.

Kessler’s attorney, Joshua Gruenberg, declined to comment on what the impact of Sanders’ testimony might be.

“I don’t want to speculate until I take his deposition,” he said. “The truth is I don’t know what he’s going to say. We’ve heard conflicting reports of the mayor’s view toward Scott Kessler’s involvement. What I believe we can prove is that there were people in the Mayor’s Office who were really upset at Scott for cooperating with the FBI and the police because it could put the Mayor’s Office in a poor light.

“... And we just want to hear what the mayor had to say about what he knew and how he felt,” he said.

In seeking to keep Sanders from being deposed, Deputy City Attorney Travis Phelps said the decision to fire Kessler did not involve Sanders and came properly from the city’s chief operating officer, Jay Goldstone.

Phelps added Friday that he feared Sanders might be asked in his deposition whether he sought to quash the prosecution in the case.

“There’s been lots of unsupported theories that the mayor, for example, supposedly contacted the D.A. to shut down prosecution,” Phelps said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever to support those sort of theories. ... It seems like it could be just harassment on a public official.”

Meyer said he thought about limiting Gruenberg’s inquiry during Sanders’ deposition, but decided against it.

“I don’t want to make limitations in a vacuum,” he said. “This is a whistle-blower case and I think the inquiry is going to be what, if any, involvement the mayor had in decisions affecting the plaintiff.”

To Phelps, he added: “If he (Gruenberg) starts asking the mayor questions about the new Chargers stadium or who know what else might be interesting, I assume that there’s going to be a proper objection.”

During the hearing, Gruenberg discussed broadly the probable parameters of his deposition of the mayor.

“I plan to ask the mayor what he knew of Mr. Kessler’s contacts withe the FBI and the police. I want to know if anyone spoke to him about that, whether he had any feelings about it. I’m going to ask him what his feelings were with regard to Scott’s situation, whether he spoke with Beth Murray about it. I don’t think it will be a terribly long deposition and I have no plans to harass the mayor.”

“That’s the court’s assumption,” Meyer said.

Turning to Phelps, he added, “If you perceive there is a problem, I assume you’ll be back.”